Vaping’ entrepreneurs, customers in Rhode Island find a place in a $3-billion a year industry
The Providence Journal / Bob Thayer
Matthew Szczoczarz, of Cumberland, exhales the vapors of an e-cigarette inside Ocean State Vapes, in Johnston. At right is the shop owner, Rebecca Boff, of North Providence. An e-cigarette heats a liquid and turns it into a colorless, odorless vapor without combustion.
By GREGORY SMITH
Journal Staff Writer
gsmith@providencejournal.com
Published: January 24 , 2015 10:43 PM
To Rebecca Boff, electronic cigarettes are a life-saver.
Boff, 40, a former Rhode Island state social worker, is the proprietor of Ocean State Vapes, at 219 Putnam Pike, Johnston. She sells e-cigarettes and supplies and welcomes their users to grab a seat and “vape” in her store.
Puffing on an e-cigarette — or vaping — is meant to be a way to quit smoking tobacco and to reduce or eliminate the inhalation of nicotine and other harmful particles and substances in tobacco.
And Boff is a believer.
She suffered from bleeding ulcers that were aggravated by her habitual smoking, and one day, she recalled, “I almost bled out in my house.”
Desperate, she turned to vaping, and after 1 1/2 years, managed to quit smoking.
“I smoked for 25 years,” she recalled. “Vaping literally saved my life. I was so addicted, I would have kept smoking.”
An e-cigarette, generally speaking, is a handheld battery-powered nicotine delivery system. It heats a liquid and turns it into a colorless, odorless vapor without combustion.
Enlarge
THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL/BOB THAYER
E-cigarette stores sell "vapes" that are pen-shaped or box-shaped with a mouthpiece, along with bottles of refill liquid, at left.
Vaping is the inhalation of the vaporized liquid. The cloud produced is water vapor, which advocates contend is relatively innocuous compared with the contents of tobacco smoke.
Boff is in the vanguard of the e-cigarette boom, which is now an estimated $3-billion-a-year industry that has become a business and cultural phenomenon a half century after the U.S. surgeon general made history when he reported that smoking tobacco causes illness and death and he recommended that the government do something about it.
The Oxford Dictionaries in 2014 pronounced “vape” its word of the year.
Agree with your post, a tax credit should be listed as an asset on their balance sheet. Obviously the government is not going to write a check to ECIG for the over payment in taxes, but the credit would be just as good as they can use it against future tax liabilities.
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